dishy – yes, the ingredients may be the same, but granola is always toasted and muesli traditionally isn’t. This means, of course, that ‘Crunchy Granola’ is a tautology.

Can we have another grammar discussion, please? I obviously need one…

…

I don’t understand why people are banging on in the news about the reference to Sunrise as a cult and it being derogatory: one of the senior management (EP at the time?), in an article in The Age sometime in the first year after Sunrise started, said with a smile to the journalist, “So, you’ve been up to see The Mansons?” in reference to the closeness of the Sunrise team.

Re the OCD housemate on Big Brother: will it compare to the joy of a Tourette’s swearfest, a la BBUK?

Granola is specifically toasted – you don’t get granola that’s raw like non-toasted muesli. It also seems that it’s specifically made with rolled oats rather than any other types of grains whereas muesli can be a combination of any number of different grains and grain parts such as bran.

I pronounce it mews-li and it’s like nails down a blackboard to hear it pronounced moos-li for me – another one is the American habit of saying herb without the ‘h’. I’m Melborne born and bred. Possibly there’s an English connection to the moos-li pronunciation – from memory – they definitely say yoggut rather than yoh-gert for yoghurt.

From the Americans I have known, there seems to be a similar scism in the pronunciation of muesli and I’m not sure that it’s a location thing.

Granola was previously a brand name in the late 19th century but the trademark lapsed quite some time ago. However, the name is still trademarked here in Australia by Sanitarium.

Apparently, the Swiss invention of muesli is quite contemporary and granola predated it significantly so I guess there was nothing before granola.

The hippy (and perhaps drug) connotations come from Woodstock in 1969 when, for three days, half a million stinky hippies lived on nothing but granola and acid trips.

I don’t, however, think that crunchy granola is a tautology. If granola is left out for a time, it loses its freshness and becomes less crunchy, eventually losing all crunch and becoming an experience like chewing on soggy cardboard.

“I don’t, however, think that crunchy granola is a tautology. If granola is left out for a time, it loses its freshness and becomes less crunchy, eventually losing all crunch and becoming an experience like chewing on soggy cardboard.”